How Corrupt Is Britain?

Paper $29.00ISBN: 9780745335308
Published
May 2015
For Sale in All Americas and the Caribbean except Canada

Cloth $99.00ISBN: 9780745335292
Published
May 2015
For Sale in All Americas and the Caribbean except Canada

Banks accused of rate-fixing. Members of parliament cooking the books. Major defense contractors investigated over suspect arms deals. Police accused of being paid off by tabloids. The headlines are unrelenting these days. Perhaps it’s high time we ask: Just exactly how corrupt is Britain? David Whyte brings together a wide range of leading commentators and campaigners, offering a series of troubling answers. Unflinchingly facing the corruption in British public life, they show that it is no longer tenable to assume that corruption is something that happens elsewhere; corrupt practices are revealed across a wide range of venerated institutions, from local government to big business. These powerful, punchy essays aim to shine a light on the corruption fundamentally embedded in UK politics, police, and finance.

Acknowledgements Preface: Will McMahon, Centre for Crime and Justice StudiesIntroduction: A Very British Corruption, David WhytePart 1: Neo-liberalism and Corruption1: Moving Beyond A Narrow Definition Of Corruption, David Beetham2: The New Normal: Moral Economies in the ‘Age of Fraud’, Jörg Wiegratz 3: Neoliberalism, politics and institutional corruption, David MillerPart 2: Corruption in Policing4: Policed by Consent? The Myth and the Betrayal, Phil Scraton5: Hillsborough: The Long Struggle to Expose Police Corruption, Sheila Coleman 6: Justice Denied: Police Accountability and the Killing of Mark Duggan, Joanna Gilmore and Waqas TufailPart 3: Corruption in Government and Public Institutions7: British State Torture: From ‘Search and Try’ to ‘Hide and Lie’, Paul O’Connor8: The return of the repressed: secrets, lies, denial and ‘historical’ institutional child sexual abuse scandals, Chris Greer and Eugene McLaughlin9: Politics, Government and Corruption: The Case of the Private Finance Initiative, Michael Mair and Paul Jones10: Revolving-door Politics and Corruption, Stuart Wilks-HeegPart 4: Corruption in Finance and the Corporate Sector11: Accounting for Corruption in the ‘Big 4’ Accountancy Firms, Prem Sikka12: On Her Majesty’s Secrecy Service, John Christensen13: Corporate Theft and Impunity in Financial Services, Steve Tombs14: High Pay and Corruption, Luke HildyardNotes on ContributorsIndex

Review Quotes

Penny Green, Queen Mary University of London

"This excellent book should be read by everyone--but particularly by those who harbor a belief that our liberal democracy protects against the worst forms of state-corporate crime. What the authors in this powerful volume reveal is a network of egregious state and corporate corruption in Britain to rival any in the developing world. With the very agencies of accountability also chief offenders, the book’s conclusion is inevitable--that only radical resistance from the public sphere can hope to challenge the culture of impunity which currently protects the most powerful."

Nicholas Shaxson, author of Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World

"At last, a book that asks the right questions about corruption, and provides some fascinating and important answers. Corruption isn't what--or where--most people think it is."

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